Today the cell phone is an important part of life for most people. The companies that develop and manufacture cell phones are continually striving to differentiate their own devices from those of their competitors by adding more and more features to each new product. Over the past few years cell phones developed from mere communications devices into multimedia hubs that enable the user to capture video sequences, to take pictures, to listen to radio, to play games and to listen to, view multimedia files, etc. Additionally, based on the latest technological advances cell phone users are now able to connect to the Internet and utilize most of the functions that a desktop PC Internet user is accustomed to having at his disposal.
This evolution in features did not, of course, take place over night. Instead, consumers have experienced a series of gradual changes as cell phones were transformed from the unwieldy bag phone of yesterday to today's modem compact phones that are not much larger than a candy bar. This trend, however, has slowed somewhat of late by the decision to include photo functionality in many cell phones and also by the addition of more and more multimedia functionality.
But changes in phone sizes are only the most obvious manifestation of technological advance. The first generation portable phones that were equipped with multimedia features had disadvantages that made such devices—desirable only by the techno-enthusiast but not by the general public. Further, these devices could only store a limited amount of video data and the quality of the material stored there was very poor. As a consequence, the user had no real incentive to keep the material or to even try to move it to another device, for example to a PC, for further processing. Of course, similar problems have existed with respect to the quality of digital photos that are acquired via in-phone cameras. Digital still picture quality has never been a strong feature of cellular telephones and the quality of the image that has been traditionally available from in-phone cameras has tended to be suitable only for display on the small LCD screens of a phone: importing those photos to a PC will only make obvious their low-resolution character. Users of cell phones have come to expect that an in-phone camera will take pictures that are most likely suitable only for display on the phone that took them and that such images are vastly inferior to those collected by a dedicated digital camera.
In recent years, however, cell phone companies have begun to improve the quality and sophistication of their in-phone cameras to the point where some phones produce images that are on par with low-end dedicated digital cameras. Compared to the range of digital photo cameras the cell phones with photo capability are still at a disadvantage regarding the quality, but the pictures that can be taken with cell phones are a definite step up in quality and functionality as compared with early models.
In the case of dedicated digital cameras, an entire industry has arisen to assist the user in getting images from inside of his or her camera and into print. For example, wired and wireless connections have been developed to make it easy for the user to migrate his or her photos from inside of the camera to a PC (or, in some instances, directly to a printer), software has been created that simplifies the process of editing and retouching digital photos, additional software has been developed that allows the user to print images, send them to third parties electronically, post them on the web, etc. Further, in some cases service bureaus have been created that are intended to make the process of moving digital photos from camera to paper even easier by automating many of the steps that would otherwise need to be performed by the camera owner. In short, the owner of a digital camera has a wide range of options when it comes to editing and printing his or her images.
Users of cell phones, however, have more limited options with respect to the images that are acquired via their phones. Of course, if the digital photo is transmitted to a PC it can be processed like any other digital image, including those from a digital camera. However, such a transfer typically requires that a connection of some sort be established between the phone and a PC. Depending on how the transfer is accomplished (e.g., via Bluetooth) the phone may need to be brought into proximity with the receiving PC. In those instances where the Internet is used to transfer the file (e.g., e-mail), the user will need to travel to the location of the PC in order to be able to view and edit the photo. However, these sorts of requirements are at odds with the mobile nature of the cell phone. The cell phone is a device that is meant to be fully functional away from a fixed location and, to the extent that that part of its functionality is tied to a stationary computer, this will tend to frustrate the central function of a cell phone.
Finally, although the user's phone might contain a large number of captured or downloaded digital images, it has heretofore been difficult to access and utilize the bulk of those images. It is certainly possible to, say, select an individual image to act as a display screen background or “wall paper”, but what is often desired is the ability to create—and view the stored images in sequence as is often done on a computer, i.e., to create and view a slide show. However, cell phones do not conventionally have such a built-in function and certainly do not have the editing tools to create “interesting” slide shows with custom fades, wipes, etc., functionality that is commonplace on the user's PC.
Thus what is needed is a method that provides the user of a modem cell phone with the option of using a cell phone in its truest sense and still enables the user to perform some functions that are normally only available to the user via connection with a desktop or other computer. Preferably the method will enable a user to automatically initiate the creation of a slide show or other multimedia presentation from the cell phone. Further, preferably the user will be required only to select specific pictures or other multimedia material resident on the users cell phone, which selected images will be integrated into the video presentation. Finally, it is preferred that the process of actually assembling the multimedia work not be carried out on the cell phone but instead automatically take place on another processing station, a remote server for example, thereby relieving the user's cell phone of the computational load necessary to create a video slide show locally.
Heretofore, as is well known in the media editing industry, there has been a need for an invention to address and solve the above-described problems. Accordingly it should now be recognized, as was recognized by the present inventors, that there exists, and has existed for some time, a very real need for a system and method that would address and solve the above-described problems.
Before proceeding to a description of the present invention, however, it should be noted and remembered that the description of the invention which follows, together with the accompanying drawings, should not be construed as limiting the invention to the examples (or preferred embodiments) shown and described. This is so because those skilled in the art to which the invention pertains will be able to devise other forms of the invention within the ambit of the appended claims.